On the HahaFiction shelf
Long Island Compromise
by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
In 1980, wealthy businessman Carl Fletcher is kidnapped and returned after his family pays a ransom. Forty years later, his wife and three grown children are still living with the consequences. News that the family fortune has dwindled forces them to reconsider how much safety their money ever bought.
From the publisher’s blurb
“the mostly unspoken love and shared experience that unite a family forever”Read the full description at Random House
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What makes it funny?
Phyllis destroyed her birth records to conceal her age. Now nobody is sure how old she was even when she destroyed them. The same family whose patriarch suffers a kidnapping still has room for such determined evasions about a birthday.
The comedy at work
The narrator pauses over family evasions with an amusement that can become uncomfortable. Even the grown children’s joke about inheriting a styrofoam factory deflates the glamour of their wealth. Money has given them security they cannot quite believe in.
Try this if…
A family saga with barbed observations about inherited privilege and Jewish American life, this suits a taste for humor that stays close to lasting harm.
Good to know
Kidnapping, physical violence and lasting trauma shape the novel. Drug use and sexual references also feature; the humor accompanies serious harm.
A few distinguishing details
- A ransom’s consequences across forty years
- A wealthy family confronts its dwindling fortune
More funny family comedy
Sources & further reading
- Kirkus review
Review
- Publisher
Publisher
- Opening excerpt
Reading sample
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